Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A hollow stalk, especially when dry, of various large umbelliferous plants.
  • noun Hemlock.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A weed; a kecksy.
  • noun A dry husk or covering.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The dried stem of certain large herbaceous plants.
  • noun obsolete, botany A plant having such a stem; a weed, a kecksy.
  • noun rare A dry husk or covering.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Origin unknown.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word kex.

Examples

  • Unlez kex thinks hammie been held to hi up… dey noe haz feer uv da hites, an will jump down frum hi playces.

    hamster space program - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger? 2008

  • Not even the distant Xer! kex could entirely escape the industrial-strength rumble and roar of the capital's major shuttleports.

    Diuturnity's Dawn Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 2002

  • It seems that elements of the very same renegade clan that attacked you and Haflunormet at the Retreat of Xer! kex planned to disrupt this fair, setting off bombs and shooting visitors indiscriminately.

    Diuturnity's Dawn Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 2002

  • Not even the distant Xer! kex could entirely escape the industrial-strength rumble and roar of the capital's major shuttleports.

    Diuturnity's Dawn Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 2002

  • It seems that elements of the very same renegade clan that attacked you and Haflunormet at the Retreat of Xer! kex planned to disrupt this fair, setting off bombs and shooting visitors indiscriminately.

    Diuturnity's Dawn Foster, Alan Dean, 1946- 2002

  • Had Alvarez allowed his eye to stray one entry beyond OED's kesh, dialect for kex, an umbelliferous plant, he would have come upon kesh-work with a cross reference to kish, Irish for a wicker basket, and by extension to a causeway built up on wicker baskets of earth or stone, and to a corduroy road.

    Kesh & Loaning Tracy, Robert 1980

  • The flower stems are very hollow and dry, nearly as much so as the hemlock or kex, and I have found that when flowers have been cut, either from the moisture collecting in the stem, or some such cause, rot sets in lower down, and soon the branches of bloom head over.

    Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, Rockeries, and Shrubberies. John Wood

  • But faith, if 'twas I, I should be as dry as a kex wi 'travelling so far.'

    Tess of the d'Urbervilles 1891

  • Their cancelled Babels: though the rough kex break

    The Princess Alfred Tennyson Tennyson 1850

  • I've begun to see "no kex alg" messages on trying to ssh into machines that were jumpstarted to the later Nevada / OpenSolaris builds.

    Planet Sun 2008

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • In Lancashire, England kecks/kex (spelling unknown)means trousers. Commonly used in the 1960s and widely known.

    June 9, 2009